Emma
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Emma" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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09:43 pm
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SOAR
Whew. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kathrynt and I just came back from SOAR, a week-long spinning and fiber arts retreat held this year in Sunriver, Oregon. We learned lots of interesting and wonderful things, met some interesting and wonderful people, and had an all-around pretty great time. My brain is currently full, though.
For future reference, it is possible to put two *each* of the following into a Toyota Corolla:
woman
spinning wheel
drum carder
rigid heddle loom
large suitcase
set of wool combs
set of wool cards
niddy-noddy
big box o' spindles and other random tools
... as well as many kinds of cheese and a week's worth of booze, space to be filled on the return trip with fiber purchases ... and still be able to see out the back window!
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11:44 pm
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arrrgh
So P got sick a week ago Saturday, I got sick a week ago today, W got it on Friday and R got it on Sunday. And tonight I was thinking we were all out of the woods, but two hours ago P threw up. He was in the swing hooked onto the swivel and had been spinning at fairly high speed for a few minutes and then had a coughing fit, so I hope it's just dizzy plus gag reflex triggered by coughing, because otherwise we're in for round two and... wah.
Also, my iron abruptly stopped getting hot today, but tonight I got a new iron that's even nicer than the old one (though sadly a bit heavier) and have thus managed to get the current quilt top down from 400 bits of fabric to 80, so yay! I also did the thinky bits on the queen sized one I'm making for our bed (pairing up frame and center fabrics for the subunits), but that one is still in 500 bits. Totals don't include borders and binding and all that stuff, just the main patchwork. Whee. Another one planned for mom is currently in 67 pieces. Yes, I am apparently going somewhat overboard with the quilting thing at the moment...
Current Mood:  weary
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09:22 pm
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not the best week, but a good month.
The downers: We started off with Pip having an all-night barf-a-thon Saturday night at Grandma's house. Then I had an all night both-ends-a-thon Monday night. My muscles still ache and I feel only 2/3 like a functional person. Today Wm flushed a toy down the toilet and got very very upset, I had to lock the bathroom to keep him from repeatedly attempting to reach all the way and fish it out. And we will have to call a plumber to get it out so that we don't end up with water everywhere. Argh! But so far R and Wm (and my mom!) seem to have avoided the tummy issues, so fingers are crossed.
The good: I've re-discovered that I enjoy sewing, so I've put together a few quilt tops and planned a few more. The book that Kathryn and I have patterns in came out and seems to be pretty good in general, I hope people like it (our projects are the two right-hand ones on page six of the on-line preview). Chorus started up again and my pretty much a formality re-audition went fine. We are getting the family room fixed up with a new floor (no more cat pee odor!) and we put up a swing very much like the one Pip has in OT at school, and the kids love it. They even play *together* with it, which is the best thing ever. Sydney is going to start working with Pip here at home and try to get the kids dealing with each other better. At this point it's mostly a habit for Pip to get upset by Wm, so if we can break that habit, things will improve a lot around here. Wm started preschool and absolutely adores it; after we picked him up the first day he said "want William still going to school." So there you are. He is, however, bitterly disappointed that he gets there in the car rather than a school bus. And things seem to be on track for Pip having a better school year this go-around rather than the sort of coasting through he did last year. We will see how that goes. Next big plan is the long-overdue kitchen remodel. Whee!
Current Mood: sore
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11:39 pm
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oh dear
So partway through warmup for the first orchestra rehearsal on this terribly difficult piece we're singing this week, my mom calls (via kathrynt's cell phone since mine was on vibrate and in my purse). She had Pip at the park and he'd come down one of the poles on the slide structure and was sitting at the bottom crying and saying "no stand up" and she couldn't get hold of anyone else. So off I went.
He wouldn't let anyone else pick him up, but he did hop to a bench between mom and a helpful dude. Then when I got there, I carried all 85 pounds of him to my car. A trip to urgent care and 4 x-rays later, and it turns out there's a small fracture at the base of his tibia -- basically where the ankle bone meets the leg bone, on the inside. So he has a big plastic and velcro boot to wear for the next 4-6 weeks. And tomorrow is his ninth birthday and we were going to take him to the roller coasters. Sigh. Poor little dude.
Current Mood: sad
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04:13 pm
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bits and pieces
Whee! kathrynt and I are sadly not well-enough known to make the blurb, though. Also of interest to me is CD versions of IK back issues, $20 for a year's worth of issues. I think I may have to get them considering how the kids have been destroying magazines.
The house a few doors down that was listed for sale at 1.15 million bucks has, astonishingly, sold... though I don't know for how much. It's bigger and nicer than ours, with a bigger lot and a kitchen remodel right before it went up for sale, so I don't think we're at the million-dollar home point yet. Egad, though.
Wm has been a righteous pill lately. I find myself hoping he's doing a last hurrah of "terrible twos" before his birthday in a couple of weeks, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Pip was so much easier at this age.
We went to Remlinger Farms this weekend and Pip discovered the climbing wall. He was uncertain about the harness, but managed to get about six feet up on his own. I got some pretty henna on my hand, just because. Reactions have been entertainingly mixed -- "WTF happened to your HAND?" "oh, pretty henna!" "whoa, is that a real tattoo?" I find myself utterly charmed by the little flowers near my fingernails. Wm spent most of the afternoon climbing in and out of an out-of-commission school bus they had.
Concerts next week, rehearsal last night was very discouraging. I hope it's a "bad rehearsal good performance" situation and that people were jogged into studying their music between now and next Monday. Sigh.
Current Mood: scattered
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10:04 pm
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cute kid things.
1. Found a sheet of paper where Pip had written:
hair
ear nose ears
mouth
tami
hand ohannnnnn
nes ne
foot feet
A self-portrait in text? "Ohannnn" is "other hand" I think, and then we have his guesses at "tummy" and "knee."
2. At dinner I gave Wm some bread and he said "Whattoo we do widduh bread? We EATuh bread! Whattoo we do widduh soda? We EATuh soda!" "Whattoo we do widduh water? We EATuh water!"
His verbs are a little confused, but I don't think anyone's ever said this to him, so he made up the query-reply pairing on his own.
3. When Pip is done with a bath, he says "bye-bye, water." Wm sometimes says this with the same intonation. We drove past a catchpond and Wm said "issa water!" and then he said "bye-bye, water." So Pip replied "bye-bye, water." You could just see the "I can make big brother do something!" light go on over Wm's head, and he kept saying "bye-bye water" and then laughing like a madman when Pip would repeat it back. This went on for a couple of miles.
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02:55 pm
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argh!
The first time I'm actually planning on going to SOAR, and registration opens at exactly the time I am going to pick up my mom to take her in for minor hand surgery. They've never done all-online registration before, so nobody even knows how quickly things are going to fill up. I don't know if I should be anxiously trying to find a wireless network somewhere in the hospital complex, or just assume I'll be able to get in to things after we're all done.
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01:18 pm
[Link] | Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear kathrynt, happy birthday to you.
Thanks for making my days a little brighter and for being my partner in crimeyarn.
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03:31 pm
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whee, back
Thanks for the ideas and well-wishes on my digestive upset post. The doctor gave me cipro in case it was bacterial and then took various samples for testing. Everything came up negative, but I did get better and some other vague problems I was having seem to have cleared up so it's possible the cipro did some good there.
On the 30th I took my laptop in for various fixes, and yesterday they decided that it wasn't cost-effective to do all the replacement bits, and that they would give me a brand-new laptop instead. They also let me buy applecare for the brand-new laptop as if I were buying a new machine, so I've got 3 years out of warranty rather than the six months that were left on the previous machine. Awesome! They somehow managed to screw up moving my data over from the old hard drive (all of the folders showed up, but they were empty, how do you even DO that?), so I went in and stood at the Genius Bar and moved all the files my own damn self instead, and I *think* I got everything. Got to double-check.
Took the kids to Disneyland last week for Pip's spring break. We got annual passes because we realized if we went in more than once in a year it would be cheaper that way. Whee. The boys sure do love it there, it's a pity it's so far away.
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05:37 pm
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shipped.
Amazon says the stuff from last week's surprises post (yeah, was unable to limit it to one) has shipped. Did I remember to put in a note? Pretty much not. D'oh!
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04:58 pm
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surprises
Idea from an_sceal:
Leave a comment with a link to your Amazon wishlist. Comments are screened. In a week (March 19th) I'll pull a name from everyone who replies, and send that person a little something from their list. Just because.
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12:12 am
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*cough cough*
Still alive over here. Just not posting. Had an awful cold in December that killed my voice for the Handel's Messiah performances, sort of got it back for Beethoven, got sick again in early February but forced my voice to be back for our Faure Requiem perfomances. Had a delightful time at Madrona Fiber Arts making a wee Estonian triangle shawl and spinning lots of samples of silk. Will probably be saying "Judith says" for the next year (plus her book is a MUST BUY for any of you who spin or are interested in spinning. Seriously. Buy it now, I'll wait).
This was followed by my mom having minor surgery on her back two weeks ago, and her computer dying the same day, so I gave her my laptop so she could stay connected while recovering. We got her set up with a new machine this weekends, while wrog was back east at our niece's senior recital. Then yesterday afternoon Pip got feverish and wanted to sleep in my mom's bed, and today both kids were feverish and sleeping and sneezing on me off and on all day, but kathrynt brought us provisions. Now both kids are in bed and wrog is safely home despite the snow dump on the eastern seaboard and a 100mph headwind across much of the country and apparently my body said "oh look, someone else to be in charge, you can get sick now, too" because I've been coughing since the time his plane was supposed to land.
But nobody got a scarily high fever, we've all had rest and fluids, my mom has recovered to the point where she doesn't need daily help, wrog is home, we all have functioning computers and I have lovely friends to help out and lovely yarn to knit, so life is really pretty good.
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01:01 am
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Madrona Fiber Arts (Feb 09) schedule is up
...and I want to take many more classes than would be humanly possible.
The list is here. I'm going to put in for the lottery for Nancy Bush's Estonian lace class, because of course I am. But if I don't get into it, I will try for Judith MacKenzie McCuin's silk class, which is sadly at the same time (I would love to take both. Also, that's Valentine's day). Baltic braids! Latvian mittens or wristers! An Estonian shawl! Many socks! Swedish two-end knitting! But unless I get a time-turner, it is not possible to take every course offered by Beth-Brown Reinsel, Nancy Bush and Judith MacKenzie McCuin.
Current thinking, wildly subject to change over the next 2 weeks until registration opens:
Thursday - Baltic Braids
Friday - maybe Estonian triangle (if not in the Estonian lace class), maybe dyeing for socks, maybe nothing?
Saturday - Estonian lace or spinning silk.
Sunday - Latvian wristers and art of plying? Estonian socks? Can I actually go for four days?
Anyone else?
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10:30 pm
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Schadenfreude, makin' the world a better place to be.
So we noticed these fancy things in the lobby of the Washington Mutual center as we were heading to the parking lot after our concerts. And in the wake of the failure and takeover, they struck us as funny in that schadenfreude way, so I snapped some crappy cell phone pix.
Look how many branches we have!
And how much money we have! Er, had.
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03:11 pm
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symphony photos
http://blog.seattlesymphony.org/?p=168 -- dress rehearsal. I'm the bright blue spot near the left edge of the chorus. Kathryn is two people along a southeast diagonal from me.
http://blog.seattlesymphony.org/?p=127 -- building out the stage.
Tags: music
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11:26 pm
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bad news, good news?
kathrynt and I sang Mahler's 8th with the Seattle Symphony tonight. Benaroya Hall is right across the street from the shiny new Washington Mutual Tower, where they have their HQ, and we park in their parking garage. When we arrived, channel 4 had a van parked on the street outside Benaroya, I thought maybe they were doing a piece on the 10th anniversary of the symphony hall or something. But when we left tonight (right before 10 pm), channel 13 had a van there. And I turned the corner to the front of the building and called Kathryn on my cell and said. "Soo... Should I be worried that one of the local news stations has a not only a news van but an actual reporter in front of WaMu HQ when I have money in WaMu?" And she said "hm, it's right before the late news, let me call Erik and have him turn on the TV, I'll call you back." And then a few minutes later she called back and said "OK, the bad news is that you no longer have money at WaMu, the good news is that you have money at J.P. Morgan."
All in all.... yikes.
In all-around better news, though, the concert went quite well. Though I feel really really sorry for the people in the second box who suddenly had 4 trumpets and trombones show up right behind them to play some fanfare-ish stuff right at the end of both movements. And the amount of sound at the end is just... wow. About 400 people on stage, all making lots of noise... I could feel it through the soles of my feet. It's an amazing thing, and it really doesn't happen very often (I won't say once in a lifetime, but... once in a decade or more) and seriously, if you're at all interested, you SHOULD GO. All the cheap seats are gone now (I found *one* Sunday at $34, the rest are $50-70), but if you call the day of performance you can sometimes get seats that people have turned in because they can't make it.
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06:09 pm
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grar!
Amy Singer emailed me to let me know a yarn shop had reprinted the entirety of my tea cozy pattern in the "our free patterns" section of their website. They do have my name on it, plus "as featured in Knitty," and a link to the original page on Knitty (and with a link, I'm not sure why they felt the need to include all of the text). I sent them mail last night asking them to take it down (though I said they could keep the photo and link up if they wanted); if it doesn't change in a few days, I will start getting grumpy. This is the second time (that I know of) that this has happened with this pattern, I guess that means it's a hit?
Admittedly, it's less annoying than the time that gal re-worded my shawl pattern slightly and was trying to sell it as her design (using my crappy prototype photograph reversed in photoshop, no less), but it's still mighty irritating. A different yarn shop once asked if they could use the tea cozy pattern as the basis of a class they wanted to teach and I said "sure, great, just direct people to the knitty site and leave all the copyright info intact if you have to print it for someone without web access, and let me know if there are particular things people have trouble with so I can improve my pattern-writing skills." I've had several people ask if they can knit it for charity auctions, which is great and something I always give permission for. I just don't get why people feel the need to put the whole text on their website (in this case some of the Knitty formatting and all) when it's RIGHT THERE ON THE INTERNET ALREADY. I mean, I really don't think Knitty's going to do the vanish without warning thing MagKnits did.
Tags: annoyances, design, knitting
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11:17 pm
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photo thing
"Take a picture of yourself right now. Don't fix your hair... just take a picture. Post that picture with no editing. Post these instructions with your picture."
I opened Photobooth and of course Wm had to get in on the action.* Dang, I look tired. I had just said "where's the baby?"
*Wm likes me to open photobooth, put the cursor over the button that takes a picture, and put it where he can reach it. He'll take 40 pictures of himself.
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10:19 pm
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tldr for non-knitters
Some years ago I bought Jacqueline Fee's Sweater Workshop to add to my "designing sweaters" library. I hadn't really gotten around to reading it, but I'm under the weather today and the knitting bookshelf is right by the sofa where I've been resting. And I came across this paragraph that just made my mouth fall open. She starts by complaining about how large buttons can hog the attention of many hours of knitting, which I can see. Then she suggests:
An alternative solution to the button problem is to eliminate the embellishment entirely. Work buttonholes at each end of the needle, and with a coordinating or contrasting knitted cord, lace the sweater as you would a shoe. This option admittedly changes the nature of the garment from cardigan to pullover -- unless you have the time and patience to lace and un-lace for each wearing. Nevertheless, the idea has merit; kept laced, the sweater has a chance of being worn. How many cardigans are? They are thrown over the shoulders, draped around the neck, or tied at the waist and sat on; a shawl of blanket would be more practical and present a better picture. No wonder that, nine times out of ten, the sweater that stands out in a crowd is a pullover. Displayed on the body proper, as intended, it makes a positive statement and thus attracts attention. At the same time, it reflects its wearer's positive qualities. Not the type to hem and haw, this one -- do I need a sweater, or don't I? A decision was made, the sweater pulled on, and worn out the door to catch eyes.
First off I'm sort of baffled at the thought that anyone would bother to knit a "cardigan" and then permanently lace it up, just knit a damn pullover to start. And secondly, did a cardigan kill her grandma or something? This is only page 34 and I'm not sure if it's worth reading the rest of the book.
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12:26 pm
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and so you'll need a blood sugar monitor...
(Well, I at least find it unbearably cute.)
Our local classical station is 98.1, KING-FM, and their slogan is "Seattle's classical choice."
If I turn the radio on, P will say some subset of {ninety (mumble) one, K I N G, KINGFM, Seattle class a choice}.
Just now, Wm found an electric thermometer and wanted to see how it worked, so I put it in his mouth. When it was done I said "98.8," he said "Seattle choice" and I about fell over laughing. Little sponge!
Tags: cutepip, cutewm
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